he’d seen in the bakery down the block, which had said, “NO BREAD.” Or the one above the empty market stand that said, “NO FRUITS OR VEGETABLES.”
Scull thought it significant that none of the signs merely had “CLOSED” written on them. Obviously, the absent storekeepers had wanted to discourage property damage from break-ins, making it clear nothing had been left behind for potential looters.
He moved up to the storefront, shaded his eyes with his hand, and peered in at the vacant shelves.
“Shit,” he said in a rueful tone. “So much for my smoked-fucking-herring.”
“Hope it’s easier to get drunk than fed around here,” Perry said.
He stood with his back to Scull, his gaze wandering up and down the street. It seemed somehow appropriate to him that Kaliningrad had taken its name from one of Vladimir Lenin’s less distinguished cronies; on its best days, it was a drab and cheerless place. The cars looked old. The people looked shabby. The streets were a blockish grid of factories, commercial warehouses, and precast concrete apartment buildings. Shoehorned between Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic States, the region — which had been part of Germany until after World War I — was separated from the rest of Russia by several borders, and valuable primarily for its strategic position as a territorial buffer and port city. Even its attraction to German tourists was unromantic, based not on sightseeing or other leisure activities, but its status as a duty-free import-export zone.
“Might as well head for the bar,” Scull said, turning from the window.
“Hold on, I think we might be in luck.” Perry nodded his head toward the corner, where a street vender had begun unloading crates from the rear hatch of his van. There were fifteen or twenty people clotting the sidewalk around him, most of them women in shapeless gray clothing with big canvas grocery sacks on their arms.
Scull frowned and smoothed down a wisp of his thinning hair. It instantly sprang back out of place. His frown deepened.
“Forget it, I’m not waiting in any goddamn line,” he said, becoming surly. “Let’s go.”
Perry continued to hesitate. A pair of young men in ugly leather jackets — he guessed they were in their twenties — had sidled up to an old woman as she left the entrance to the shop. One of them was very tall, the other about average height. The shorter one was drinking out of a brown paper bag and walking slightly off balance.
Wrapped in a dark, well-worn winter shawl, her grocery bag weighted with goods, the woman tried to brush past them, but they quickly flanked her on both sides, keeping pace with her.
Perry felt a little jolt in the pit of his stomach. It was a sensation he’d experienced often in his days as a New York City detective.
His pale blue eyes locked on the three of them, he tapped Scull on the shoulder and motioned in their direction.
“Tell me, Vince, what’s wrong with that picture?” he said.
Scull stood beside him and looked blank. He was thinking exclusively about getting a drink now.
“Looks to me like a couple black marketeers making a pitch, is all.” He grunted. “Maybe they’ve got herring.”
Perry was shaking his head. “Black marketeers go after tourist cash. You ever see any of them stick to a babushka like that?”
Scull was silent. The old woman had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and pulled her satchel closer against her body. The two guys in cheap leather were still crowding her. The taller of them had slipped his right hand into his jacket pocket and was pointing at the satchel with the other.
“Those punks are gonna boost her,” Perry said.
“It’s none of our business. Let the locals handle it.”
“You see anybody about to do that?” Perry made a sweeping gesture with his hand that encompassed both sides of the street. The pedestrians moving past the old lady didn’t seem to understand what was happening. Or maybe they did and just weren’t getting involved.
“Goddamn it, Neil,” Scull said, trotting along at his heels, “this is
Ignoring him, Perry reached the two men and put his hand on the taller one’s left shoulder.
“All right, that’s enough, leave her alone,” he said, waving him on.
The tall guy stiffened a little but remained where he was. The shorter guy glared at Perry and took a slug of whatever was in the brown paper bag. Scull moved up next to him and waited. In the center of the group, the old woman had raised her hand to her mouth and was looking around uncertainly, her face nervous and fearful.
“I said to take a hike,” Perry said, conscious that the guy still had his right hand in his pocket. “Pahkah!”
The guy glanced at him sideways and jerked his shoulder, trying to shake him off. He had small, close-set eyes and needed a shave. Perry tightened his grip.
The guy looked at him another moment, then suddenly rounded on him and spat in his face, his hand coming out of his pocket, something metallic flashing in his fist. A knife.
As the blade slashed up at him, Perry shifted his body to avoid the attack, clamping his left hand around the guy’s wrist in mid-thrust and then pushing it downward. The punk struggled to bring the knife back up, but Perry slammed the back of his right hand with the outer edge of his palm in a crisp chopping motion. He felt the snap of bone, and then the guy groaned in pain as his hand went limp, hanging from his arm at an unnatural angle, his weapon clattering to the pavement.
Still holding the guy by his wrist, Perry moved in on him and jammed his knee into his crotch. The guy doubled over, clutching himself. Then he sank to the ground.
Perry was bending to snatch up the knife up when he heard the loud crash of breaking glass.
He glanced quickly over at the shorter man. Holding the bottle by its neck, he had smashed it against the side of a building, shaken off the paper bag, and was waving its jagged stump at Scull. Beer and suds were running down the wall where he’d shattered it.
Scull grinned slightly. The guy swiped the bottle stump at him, shaking droplets of liquid from the pointy spurs of glass. Scull felt a rush of air against his face and slipped backward an instant before it would have torn into his cheek. Then he reached into his jacket pocket, brought out a thin metal OC canister, and thumbed down its sprayhead. A conical mist discharged from its nozzle into his attacker’s face. The guy gagged, dropped the broken bottle, and began to stagger around blindly, clutching at his face as the pepper spray dilated the capillaries of his eyes and swelled the soft membranes in his nose and throat. Scull shoved the canister back into his pocket, spun him around by the shoulder, and drove an uppercut into his middle. The guy sagged to his knees beside his friend, gasping for breath, thick ropes of mucus glistening on his chin.
Scull looked down at him without moving. Disoriented, his eyes red and teary, the guy still hadn’t quit. He struggled to pull himself upright and somehow managed to get his knees under him. Scull swung his leg out and kicked him full in the face. He dropped back to the ground, his hands covering his nose, blood spurting through his fingers.
“Should’ve stayed down,” Scull muttered.
Perry realized that he still had the taller guy’s gravity knife in his hand. He folded the blade into the handle and slipped it into the back pocket of his trousers.
Then he felt a tug on his sleeve. The old woman. She had stepped forward, a smile on her plump, upturned face.
Perry put his hand on her arm.
“Thanks for offering, Grandmother, but you should keep them for yourself,” he said, motioning for her to return the fruit to her sack. “Go home now.
“We’d better get out of here ourselves,” Scull said.
Perry glanced both ways. A crowd had begun to gather around them. The cars and buses had continued their slow progress along the street, though many rubberneckers were pausing at the curb to get a look at the commotion.
“Yeah,” he said. “Still want that drink?”
“I’m thirstier than ever,” Scull said.
